Pain Game (Gatekeeper's Apprentice Book One)
by Layne Raconteuse
Summary: Tess Cromwell is one of many young practitioners in the South with a healthy distrust of magical authorities. She fights to survive each day, using her talents of clairvoyance to stay afloat and stay ahead. Then her Foresight warns her of an impending doom, one that will bring her before the Black Council's wrath, or the White Council's ruthless justice, guilty or not.
1. Graveyard Shift

**Chapter One**

 **Graveyard Shift**

You should know better than to ask a testy young wizard's name, but I'll tell you anyway: Therese Leigh Valentina Cromwell. Don't ask. Conjure at your own risk. The name was a gift from a very-nearly-warlock mother, and a none-too-sane father. I go by Tess. Only very close friends and very distant enemies have the permission, or balls, to call me Therese.

I was an emancipated minor, and now I'm a fledgeling wizard, old enough to vote, too young to drink. I have my high school diploma, courtesy of an online academy and a certain belly button piercing, and a continuing street education from all the sundry forgotten places in my home city.

I'm a born-and-raised Southern girl, but that doesn't make me like the summer heat when it rolls over Atlanta. Between the Gulf of Mexico and the Appalachian mountains, a lot of humidity gets trapped down here, and there are enough forests left to strangle any breezes we get.

Which is why, naturally, I'm a night owl come April. Spring came early this year, and that meant summer was on its merry way. Still, after the sun goes down, I'm safe to wear my beloved layers, and my leather jacket and wool felt fedora feel less like torture and more like fashionable protection once again. I'm a chick that likes to go a-ghost hunting in style.

My steel-toed secondhand boots sink into the damp turf, and I can almost feel the ground protesting. After I had stepped over the curb, I felt the beginnings of a barrier being passed. The feeling quickened as I advanced into the cemetery, and outright snapped once I stepped onto the first grave. It was an old one, with an obelisk gravestone and some bedraggled memorial flags stuck into the dirt over it.

 _Enter into the Twilight Zone,_ I intone in my head, mentally humming the theme song. Externally, I listen, feeling for the colors in the air. My magic always worked with an odd intuition- I was born clairvoyant. I can see psychic imprints, and read one's future possibilities and one's past. Ghosts are easier than people. They don't have a future.

But their footprints aren't as obvious. I stretch out my senses, feeling for the chilly threads of the dearly departed that was said to be haunting this area lately. For me, it's almost as if my Sight is stuck permanently cracked open, like a kid with their eyes half-closed, peering under their lashes and pretending to be asleep. Magic shows up as music and colors, half visible to my physical senses. Other details echo in my mind.

Reaching under my unzipped leather jacket, I tug open a snap on my bandolier, and pull out a tiny handbell from its pouch, keeping my fingers wrapped firmly around the clapper. The bell is one of a set I collected over time, and it's inscribed with symbols on the inside and out, an odd collection of my own personal cipher, twining designs resembling the illuminations of medieval manuscripts, and musical notation. This is one of the middling-sized bells, and the tone activates a spell that acts almost like a bat's echolocation, letting me see in greater detail the things that want to stay hidden.

I raise the bell, carefully releasing the clapper, and take a deep breath. I swing the bell down, and the whole thing vibrates in my hands as the metal rings sharply. At the same time, I sing a single note, pure and clean, feeling the two sounds resonate together. I feel the force of the magic leaving my chest, sweeping out in an ever-expanding arc across the graveyard. The aftereffect buzzes my teeth.

For a brief instant, I see the form of a young woman crouched by a shrub, huddled over a spot where a dog ripped up the grass and dug a hole. I can hear weeping for about half a second. Then it vanishes.

I take one step towards the line of bushes, squinting in the dark at the hole.

Then she's there, right in front of me, glowing and brilliant.

"Who are you?" she says. Yikes, she's cognizant.

That's the trouble with my little locator spell. It tipps the spooks off that I'm there.

Cue the trumpet crescendo in the _Twilight Zone._

She doesn't give me a chance to answer. My bell flips out of my gloved hand on its own accord, and I feel icy cold fingers rake over, and then _through_ , my throat. The feeling makes me shiver.

I fumble under my collar for my necklace, a little silver crucifix an old friend gave me. Whispering a few words, half spell, half prayer, the cross begins to softly glow in a silvery light resembling the moonlight. The scratching in my throat ceases. I tap my walking stick on the ground a few times, waiting. Sometimes my clairvoyance gives me head warning, sometimes it doesn't.

A thrill races down my arm, and I drop my necklace to raise my glove over my head and choke out a spell.

" _Attendus!"_ I cry, and the air swirls around me, coalescing in a pearly blue shield, insubstantial and rippling like water. An instant later, I hear a wicked scream from all directions. There is a sensation like something smacking hard into my palm, like a baseball thrown awry. My shield flares, and I see a ghostly white figure rebound away, passing through a gravestone off to the side and landing on its back on the ground. Then it dissolves.

Dropping the shield, I dive down and retrieve my bell, putting it away in my bandolier as I get a move on, backpedaling away from where I saw the ghost vanish. Strapped to my leg is another pouch, one holding a carved wooden vessel set with metal tracery and carefully blessed for the occasion. I pull it out- about the size of a bar tumbler, and unscrew the lid.

" _Animatus colliganen_ ," I murmur, and then close my eyes, plopping down to sit cross-legged on the ground. The rest of the spell isn't verbal. I push more juice into my crucifix, and it glows brighter, the light soaking into my eyelids and turning the velvety darkness more of a warm gray.

I start humming, softly at first, gathering my will and layering it into the notes. They gather into the design behind my eyelids, each one adding another line to the framework, fleshing out the traces in my mind into something more solid. They form a vortex, spreading out ahead of me and converging on the container in my hand. The last few ends snap onto the container itself, and then I can see it clearly. Holding it in my head, I rise, placing the container on the ground.

"So mote it be," I whisper, and the threads unlatch from my clairvoyant sight, becoming their own entity. I can feel the pull immediately.

Then at once my mind is assaulted by rage and woe.

 _Stop!_ The woman's voice cries. _My baby! Oh, my baby…_

But quick as it came, the ghost is trapped by the vortex, and I see bits of it as they swirl into the container. When the spell is done, I feel it weaving into place over the top, trapping the spook inside. It still looks empty to the naked eye, but I can feel the little ball of suffering curled up inside.

Poor thing. I have to remind myself that ghosts are just a spiritual imprint- not people at all.

I pick up the vessel, screwing the lid on and saying a few more spells to keep it sealed for now. Something strikes me as off. The jobs Mr. Wilson sends me on are usually pretty easy and harmless, but this one just felt… too good to be true.

Idly putting the container back in my pouch, I walk over to the bushes, taking a closer look at the hole some mutt dug at the roots.

I lower my hand inside, and immediately feel the wrongness. Snapping a nearby twig, I scrape at the dirt, deepening the hole until I poke something that isn't soil. The twig levers up a little shard of something, white with browned insides, stained by the clay and the surrounding muck.

Bones. Tiny ones.

I drop the twig and back away. How long have these been here, I wonder? They're too clean to have been buried here as long ago as I suspect. Wilson said the lady I was after was born and had died in the Victorian days. So would her child, logically. Those bones shouldn't even still be around.

Then I examine the turf more closely. The soil is too loose around the hole, not the clean, hard packed clay, but something turned up, with some debris caught deeper down than they should be. I find a root from one of the shrubs, bitten neatly through by something that wasn't a dog's paws. Sure, a dog must have dug this little grave back up- there are claw ridges in the dirt- but someone… huh.

I shake my head, mulling it over. Ghosts tend to be anchored to something in particular, and a young mother who lost her child would be pretty attached to the grave of her little darling. If someone moved the bones, the ghost may very well follow. But who would move this here? And it was such a… well, a harmless vanilla thing. At least to practitioners like myself, and I'm no heavyweight. More raw talent than most my age, and certainly more than I care to handle all at once, but nowhere near the league of a real wizard, yet.

Then my clairvoyance makes my back tense, and I whirl around, looking up.

Two seconds later, a light shoots up over the tree line, exploding in the sky with a sharp crack. It resembles a red firework, but for the bolts of lightning that shoot back down from it. I get a queasy feeling in my stomach, the kind that says something wicked is afoot. Moments later, I taste the copper tang of magic laced with ill-will. A lot of it.

I quickly weigh my options. Realistically, I have exactly no talent for combat. I'm good at veils, illusions, and the occasional flash-bang, but in a real fight, I'm better at running away. My rational part says I need to head home, _now,_ and forget what I saw. Maybe send up a red flag on the ParaNet. Somebody needs to know I smelled black magic.

But one eyewitness of a red firework isn't likely to be noticed by people that matter. And I don't like the idea of warlocks in town. I had enough brushes with them when I was younger, and it cost me a family. Mainly because a couple of said warlocks were _in_ the family. Now I live Lost Boys style with a crew of teens and young adults, with some very young children sprinkled in. All of us have talent, and all of us look out for one another.

Being in the dark about this seems scarier than the risks of checking it out. There's that whole saying about the devil you know and all that, or the spider you can see is better than the one that gets away.

Tipping my fedora, I softly sing the spell that weaves a veil around myself. It's the kind I'm best at, a veil that muffles my silhouette and the sounds I make, making me harder to notice. It comes with the added feature of directly deflecting any attention that comes over me, which was really freaking useful when I was seventeen and in a homeless shelter. Tucking my now-cold crucifix back under my collar, I grip my walking stick close and head for the trees. I can only hope whoever sent that little firework up is too occupied to go probing for magic like mine.

I make it about as far as the tree line itself before I feel it like a punch to the gut. A smothered scream, a flash of pain, and the raw sucking of opened veins. It's coming from less than a stone's throw away. I tumble to my knees, trembling and fighting the urge to vomit.

Death.

Someone just broke the first law of magic.

Someone just _died._


	2. Nightmares

**Chapter Two**

 **Nightmares**

I can still feel the coldness of bleeding to death, and the heavy numbness... A chest wound. Someone, probably a young woman like me, was either stabbed or shot. But there's something else- old scars, old misery, a long-standing panic...

My stomach lurches, and I barely make it back to the relative safety of the graveyard border before I'm violently sick in the bushes. I haven't eaten in hours, and nothing but hot bile burns my tongue.

There is a reason I felt that impression so strongly. Every clairvoyant picks up signals and experiences the most strongly from people like themselves in some way. Age, gender, life experiences, magical talent. All of these factors matter.

Of course, death is a pretty strong signal anyhow.

Pulling a handkerchief from my pocket, I carefully wipe my mouth, and then kick dirt and leaves over the mess I left. It's unlikely someone will use your vomit to curse you, but I've heard things. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Swearing profusely in my head, I straighten my hat and march back up the hill, pulling my veil back over me. It's shaky, but it should hold. Provided I can keep my cool.

Breathing evenly through my nose, I focus on counting my heartbeats and holding up the veil as I reach the spot I intended, just behind where the trees break off into a grassy incline to the empty lot behind the graveyard.

There's only a half-moon to see by, but it's enough. I see two dark, indistinct shapes crouched over a girl in a plaid skirt and crisp white blouse- a catholic school uniform. _That's_ when my stomach twists with something else.

Her skin, sun-kissed from the latest spring trip, is liberally sprinkled with freckles. Her red hair is spread out behind her head, tangled in the grass as if she struggled. Her clothing is askew, and torn open in front. Her chest is nothing but... a mess. A blood-soaked mess, blackened in the bluish moonlight.

I think I know who this girl is.

On the ParaNet, there was this girl from a conservative household going to the _Our Lady_ school in one of the nice neighborhoods south of the city. I talked to her on the chat about how to balance her faith and her Gift- I do it all the time, though admittedly I didn't have parents that tried to convince me all magic was of Satan. I'd pointed her to one of my own mentors, and asked her to email him when she got the chance.

The two dark figures work over her corpse, working with slender knives to do something I can't quite make out. It's all I can do to stay detached.

My veil must have wavered, because a coppery smell assaults my nose. I fight to pull it back up, but I can _feel_ someone else's malignant power on the other side of it, probing it. With a sinking feeling, I realize I must have just given myself away.

One of the figures seems to turn towards me, and I get the impression of interest before that fades. Meanwhile, I sit frozen where I am, hardly daring to breathe.

That's the secret to stealth- the less you move, the less they see you. I reason with myself- I'm wearing all black in the dead of night under the shadows of trees. There is _no reason_ to think they saw me.

Eventually, the two move away. I watch them vanish into the trees across the lot, leaving their victim sprawled in the grass.

Grace. That was her name. Grace Fairchild.

Knowing better than to go down to the body, I slip back the way I came, taking every precaution I know to. Then I go straight to the street, ignoring the bus stop. Reaching under my hat band, I pull down the sheer silken veil my friend made for me, embroidered with runes for confusion and ignorance. Muttering the words to activate it, I feel the magic slip over my skin, turning me into someone else. It will last me until I get back home.

Dread gathers in my chest. There's a feeling I've grown familiar with. It's a metallic dread, both hot and cold like a fever coming on. There's a dream holding the future in it waiting for me when I go to bed. And from the feel of it, the future is not bright.

It's a long walk home.

* * *

The house I live in is a sheer violation of housing codes that no one follows anyway.

Nestled between a trailer park and a mostly-empty strip mall, the one-story house has two bedrooms and one bathroom, and it houses the seven vagabonds that make up my crew. Myself included.

Pulling my lanyard out from under my shirt, I sort out the correct key and unlock the door, then the deadbolt. A quick password opens the wards, and a gesture opens the burglar chain. I carefully creep inside, relocking everything behind me. The living room is dark, and the smell of wax is faded. I hear the occasional pop from the fireplace, but the coals are dim. Dropping my cane in the old dented can, I take a deep breath.

Nick is asleep on the couch, and Swanson sits awake in the armchair, idly stroking the stray cat we adopted. Archimedes, a ragdoll persian, swishes his tail in time with the grandfather clock in the corner, watching a spider make a web atop a bookshelf.

Swanson looks up, his head half-rising from where it rested in his hand. His platinum hair picks up and reflects the stripes of yellow street light filtering in through the blinds. "You don't look well," he says.

"I'm not," I say gruffly, hanging up my hat and stripping off my jacket. I try to unstrap my bandolier, but my hands are shaking too badly. I don't think I've stopped trembling all night.

"Here," he says, standing quickly. Archimedes leaps gracefully down. He walks behind me, undoing the straps for me and carefully lifting the bandolier over my head, keeping the bells from jangling within their pouches. "Wouldn't want to wake the little ones."

I raise an eyebrow at his tone. "Is Celeste having bad dreams again?" I ask. He nods.

I curse softly. Swanson and I are the oldest, in our early twenties, but the others in the crew are much younger. Nick, the native-American boy on the couch, is fourteen. There are two other teens, Lanna and Dianne, who are fifteen and sixteen respectively, but there are also two little girls that came to join us not long ago. Sisters. Their parents were taken by the White Court, leaving them to fall through the cracks of the severely broken foster care system. The younger one is Celeste, who is six. And she's just as clairvoyant as me, which is a really sucky thing for a six-year-old. The fact that her gift came on that early says it will only be stronger as she grows. I swore to her sister, Sarah, that I would do everything I could for her.

If Celeste is having nightmares at the same time I have a _bull_ of a premonition coming on, that can't be good. There is no such thing as a coincidence in this world, after all.

Yanking off my gloves, I rub my hands together, flexing my fingers against the multitude of rings on them. Two of them on my pinkies are there to put a damper on my power, but the rest have their own reasons. I needed all of them tonight, and now my hands are swollen and red. Shaking my head, I stride to my room, the tiny guest bedroom I share with Dianne.

"Night," I call softly back, closing the door behind me as I pull off my rings en masse, letting them jingle to the floor. Undoing my belt and letting the magic snap and slide off, I let my cargo pants fall to the ground and strip off my shirt, stained with sweat.

Dianne is asleep on the trundle bed pulled out from under the twin bed I sleep on. Several dreamcatchers hang at the head and foot of the bed, and a white mandala is painted on the black ceiling speckled with painted constellations. Dianne's practice stuff is still scattered around the floor, with her bangles and staff lying in front of the dresser, and the string of dead fairy lights stretched out across the rug. I tiptoe my way to the foot of my bed, climbing in in my boxers and sports bra.

By now, the impending dream is hammering behind my eyelids like a strobe light. As soon as I flop down and roll up in the sheets, it flies over me, giving me that weird sensation of falling and floating into darkness.

Then it begins.

* * *

What's really weird and probably pretty cliche about prophetic dreams is that they aren't the clearest when they happen. That's why I have my dreamcatchers- they catch the impression of dreams while I'm in them, giving me a record I can review. It's saved our lives in the past, being able to interpret my visions.

I've put some in place for Celeste, as well. Heaven knows, her dreams matter too.

But this time, it's _way_ too clear. That can only mean one thing.

You see, the future is a muddly thing. It's full of possibilities and branching paths that all tangle and intertwine until you can't make sense of them. But the more certain a future becomes, the clearer it is.

And I saw the possibilities there, clear as day. Not a riot of factors and odds, but three dead ends. Exactly _three._

That should tell you just how positively screwed I am.

I see cold stone and echoing underground chambers, a corridor of cells, and stern-faced, sword bearing men and women in grey cloaks. Wardens- I've seen them before, when they raided my house to stop my mother. That's the singular future, where there is no deviation. That's the place I _will_ go, whether I like it or not. The three possibilities take place there.

I see a gathering of wizards- so much power in one place that the pressure makes my head ache. Everyone in black robes, wearing blue stoles. Then there is a group in the front, wearing purple ones. At the lead is a man with a long white beard. They speak, first in Latin, then in English. Something about warlocks.

That's one possibility.

The next two, I can't see anything. There's a black bag over my head. The difference is that in one, there is an eerie silence. In the other, I can hear Celeste screaming before something abruptly silences her.

Then there is a deep, wrenching shock as I feel the kiss of cold metal and blinding pain, then a curious numbness...

* * *

Thrashing, I struggle myself awake, gasping for breath. Dawn light flares through the window, bright enough to make my eyes sting with tears.

I can't stop the keening cry that flows out with my breath, as if someone punched me in the chest.

"Tess?"

Dianne is awake, standing over me. The others blink from the doorway.

My throat is raw and sore. Reaching up to touch my face, I feel the dry salt tracks. I was screaming in my sleep.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit up. Dianne sits next to me, her bangs falling in her face.

"What did you see?" she half-whispers. I swallow hard.

"I saw the White Council," I say, my voice grating. "And I saw warlocks."

Swanson's expression hardens. Clearing his throat, he jerks his head towards the front door. _Let's talk about this outside, why don't we?_ that look says. Rubbing my face, I stand, walking unsteadily out of the room. I only remember at the last second to grab my robe off the hook by the door, covering up my half-nakedness. Terry cloth sweeps over and conceals the scars down my shoulders and abdomen.

We walk outside, and around the house to the big oak tree growing at the corner of our backyard. A pile of firewood conceals us from the view of the house. He leans against the trunk, his hands stuffed in the front pocket of his gray hoodie.

"How soon is it?" he asks, his voice hard. I tilt my head at him.

"Celeste said last night she saw you _die,_ Tess. How soon?" he demands.

I shake my head. "I don't know yet," I admit. "I saw three paths. In one of them, we all make it."

His pale eyes widen. "We _all-_ What exactly did you see?"

Closing my eyes, I tilt my face up to soak in the sunrise, willing it to wash away the ugly fear lingering in the back of my head.

It takes me several minutes to find my voice. "The two other paths are where I die. In one of them, I die alone. In the other, the White Council kills all of us. And the warlocks who framed us get away scott free."

I hear Swanson hiss through his teeth. "Jesus, Therese. What happened last night? How are we going to get tangled up with warlocks?"

I shake my head. "I don't think it's something that will happen," I say. "I think it already has. The warlocks are already here. But now they've included us in their plans. They mean to make us their scapegoats."

"Then we have to find them," he says. "That's how we make it out of this. We find them and we get to the White Council before the White Council comes for us."

"Got a plan?" I ask sarcastically. He raises his hands.

"Hey, you're the seer, not me." He sighs. "You know, I used to know a guy. A warden, with a number up in Chicago. But the grapevine says he's out of commission."

"Got any other ideas?"

"Keep an ear to the ground. I'm going to call on some friends. Maybe send a flag up on ParaNet."

I nod. It's a sound plan. Then something shifts for me.

"I'm going to finish my errand," I say. I need to turn in that spook-in-a-bottle to Mr. Lawrence. "I should be back this afternoon. Make sure the others stay together."

Then I'm going to chase another hunch.


End file.
